What are you doing with your time?

If you work on a computer, it can be surprisingly hard to tell where your time goes.

I know because last week, I swear I had no idea where my time went. It felt like I did so little, but so much at the same time. And both can be true. So either I underestimated how much I got done, or I wasn’t actually doing much.

So what did I do? I vibe coded my own automated time-tracking app with notifications that check on me when I’m slacking off or getting distracted… Just joking! (But I have thought about doing it.)

Knowing how tempting it is to have an AI agent build the time-tracking app of my dreams, I decided to go against that instinct and use the simplest method I could think of: a pen and a sheet of paper.

I know it sounds like something an 80-year-old would do (or a toddler!), but I’m being totally serious.

I know this might seem odd today, especially when everyone seems to be trying to delegate everything to their AI agents. But AI agents won’t give you everything this “system” can:

• You become more aware of where your time goes. Writing down what you did each hour makes you pause and notice what you’re doing while you’re doing it. And that alone can be more helpful than analysing your time-tracking data at the end of the week.
• You can see your progress as you go. Having a visible record of what you’ve accomplished can be a great way to reinforce your progress, especially on days when you feel like you’ve done nothing.
• It’s hard to ignore. You can leave your sheet somewhere you’ll see it, so you don’t forget to keep tracking. And if you still forget, just set an hourly reminder using your phone’s clock app.
• You won’t get distracted building a system to track your distractions. If you’re anything like me, that’s a very real risk.

Try it for just two or three days. Write down what you’re doing as you go. You could make a simple table with one column for each day and one row for each hour. Add a notes column too, so you can jot down what was going on or how the day felt.

Here’s a customizable DOCX template you can use.

It might sound like extra homework, and I’m not going to lie, it can be tedious. But even a couple of days can help you notice patterns you might otherwise miss. And if you find it useful, keep going for a full week.

If you’ve actually tried pen and paper for a few days and still feel it doesn’t work for you, try a simple time-tracking app.

I bet you don’t need a complex system to solve most of your problems. That’s why I prefer to try the simplest method I can, with tools I already have, before turning to fancy tools and apps.

Don’t let the merchants of complexity tell you otherwise.

Tracking your time won’t solve everything, but it gives you something real to work from.